INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
More than R200 million in taxpayers money was used to help build the presidents private villa, but it was declared a national key point and therefore the citizens were not entitled to full disclosure.
File photo: DOCTOR NGCOBO
I have been confronted with phrases like national key point, national security and national interest many times in my life as a journalist.
I was a cub reporter in 1975 when I was arrested in Komatipoort for taking a picture of white refugees from Mozambique brought in by train.
Rolling stock is a national key point, the officer told me and explained that railway coaches were in the back of the picture I took. In 1977 the head of the Bureau of State Security, General Hendrik van den Berg, summoned me to his office and threatened me with indeterminate detention without trial.
I was investigating a story of policemen crossing the border into Zimbabwe to rescue a captured colleague, and “Lang Hendrik” insisted I tell him who had tipped me off – it was a matter of great national interest that the whistle-blower be dealt with, he said.
In the early 1980s my accreditation as military correspondent was revoked because I questioned the truthfulness of SADF statements on what was happening in Namibia and Angola, where they were engaged in a war.
Between 1988 and 1992 I was convicted four times under the Internal Security Act of 1982, the Official Secrets Act of 1965, the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 and the Terrorism Act of 1967.
My crimes included quoting a banned person, reporting on police activities in townships during a state of emergency and exposing an intelligence agent posing as an academic.
Where the government couldn’t nail me on breaking the law, they went for me by getting the president of the country, senior civil servants and police generals to sue me for defamation using taxpayers’ money – six times.
I was labelled unpatriotic and reckless. I was endangering national security and acting against the national interest. I was aiding and abetting the enemies of the republic and I was disrespecting the brave people who were fighting to keep the South African nation safe.
Of course, the government then was an illegitimate one, fighting the black majority to safeguard white rule.
Today’s government is one elected by all, and operates under a progressive constitution.
But I don’t think it would be unfair to say the present government is displaying the same instincts and using the same arguments as the apartheid governments did.
Those who question, investigate or criticise are unpatriotic, reckless and enemies of the people (or “the revolution”).
More than R200 million in taxpayers’ money was used to help build the president’s private villa, but it was declared a national key point and therefore the citizens were not entitled to full disclosure.
We are not even allowed to know what the other national key points are.
When journalists and opposition politicians questioned the circumstances surrounding the death of South African soldiers in a foreign land and the motives for sending them there, they were urinating (the ANC’s official statement used a much cruder term) on the soldiers’ graves.
When he addressed the Central African Republic tragedy, President Zuma parroted PW Botha with his statements of national interest and national security, and when he declared that military matters were not open for public discussion.
There was a strong prima facie corruption case against Zuma after his partner in finance was sent to jail for a long time. Dubious recordings of phone conversations were illegally given to his lawyer and used as an excuse to have these charges dropped.
Citizens are not allowed to know what was said during these conversations, not even after the high court ordered their release.
There is a very real possibility that these conversations didn’t warrant the dropping of the charges, even that our president should be in jail right now.
This culture of secrecy, of saying the government knows best and citizens shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about matters of national interest, has clearly become all-pervasive in the ruling party.
That is how we should understand their introduction of the Protection of State Information Bill, which has been fought so valiantly by civil society.
It is this culture of secrecy that has led to the men and women in the Union Buildings and Luthuli House waging a low-intensity war against the media, with some even declaring that the media are the enemies of democracy and of the people.
This culture was behind the ANC’s filibustering of a parliamentary review of the military conflict in the CAR last week – in fact, it is behind the ANC’s downgrading of Parliament to a talking shop with little impact.
The ANC and the government are clearly afraid to let the sun shine into the dark rooms where they make decisions and do deals.
Precious little is left of the principles of accountability and transparency embodied in our constitution. Civil society should be militant in its fight against this steady white-anting of our democracy.
The Mercury
